Well I think we should have stayed out of Iraq for one. Vietnam is another.

Which Iraq war CP - 1991 or 2003?

Vietnam must be seen in the context of the Cold War - America at the time feared annihilation from 'the great spectre' of the global spread of communism and indeed with the Cuban missile crisis this almost happened. Ill advised? certainly - but understandable to an extent given the ideological and political context of the time. It is certainly a conflict every American must wish they never entered, but that is surely in most cases because America was thoroughly defeated and humbled in such a humiliating way.

2003.

You can look a lot further back to understand the Vietnam conflict. Colonialism messed up that country big time. "We", meaning France, Japan, England, then the US as well, (all the colonial powers, then WW2 allies), didn't really learn much from past mistakes, and kept making them again and again.

I've read so many horrific stories of sharia 'justice'. It sickens me.

I'm sure it'll never be allowed to take hold here. I don't care how un-PC it sounds but somebody will have to explain that this is England/Britain you're in and we do things differently here. If you don't like it....

Please enlighten us - how is the 'little Eichmann thing' a valid analogy exactly?

Here's what the guy had to say about it. It makes perfect sense to me.

What is wrong in his reasoning?

Dara wrote:

In the last few days there has been widespread and grossly inaccurate media coverage concerning my analysis of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, coverage that has resulted in defamation of my character and threats against my life. What I actually said has been lost, indeed turned into the opposite of itself, and I hope the following facts will be reported at least to the same extent that the fabrications have been.

The piece circulating on the Internet was developed into a book, "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens". Most of the book is a detailed chronology of U.S. military interventions since 1776 and U.S. violations of international law since World War II. My point is that we cannot allow the U.S. government, acting in our name, to engage in massive violations of international law and fundamental human rights and not expect to reap the consequences.

I am not a "defender" of the September 11 attacks, but simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned. I have never said that people "should" engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy. As Martin Luther King, quoting Robert F. Kennedy, said, "Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable."

This is not to say that I advocate violence; as a U.S. soldier in Vietnam I witnessed and participated in more violence than I ever wish to see. What I am saying is that if we want an end to violence, especially that perpetrated against civilians, we must take the responsibility for halting the slaughter perpetrated by the United States around the world. My feelings are reflected in Dr. King's April 1967 Riverside speech, where, when asked about the wave of urban rebellions in U.S. cities, he said, "I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed . . . without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today : my own government."

In 1996, Madeleine Albright, then ambassador to the UN and soon to be U.S. secretary of state, did not dispute that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of economic sanctions, but stated on national television that "we" had decided it was "worth the cost." I mourn the victims of the September 11 attacks, just as I mourn the deaths of those Iraqi children, the more than 3 million people killed in the war in Indochina, those who died in the U.S. invasions of Grenada, Panama and elsewhere in Central America, the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, and the indigenous peoples still subjected to genocidal policies. If we respond with callous disregard to the deaths of others, we can only expect equal callousness to American deaths.

Finally, I have never characterized all the September 11 victims as "Nazis." What I said was that the "technocrats of empire" working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns." Adolf Eichmann was not charged with direct killing but with ensuring the smooth running of the infrastructure that enabled the Nazi genocide. Similarly, German industrialists were legitimately targeted by the Allies.

It is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military target, or that a CIA office was situated in the World Trade Center . Following the logic by which U.S. Defense Department spokespersons have consistently sought to justify target selection in places like Baghdad , this placement of an element of the American "command and control infrastructure" in an ostensibly civilian facility converted the Trade Center itself into a "legitimate" target. Again following U.S. military doctrine, as announced in briefing after briefing, those who did not work for the CIA but were nonetheless killed in the attack amounted to "collateral damage." If the U.S. public is prepared to accept these "standards" when the are routinely applied to other people, they should be not be surprised when the same standards are applied to them.

It should be emphasized that I applied the "little Eichmanns" characterization only to those described as "technicians." Thus, it was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in the 911 attack. According to Pentagon logic, were simply part of the collateral damage. Ugly? Yes. Hurtful? Yes. And that's my point. It's no less ugly, painful or dehumanizing a description when applied to Iraqis, Palestinians, or anyone else. If we ourselves do not want to be treated in this fashion, we must refuse to allow others to be similarly devalued and dehumanized in our name.

The bottom line of my argument is that the best and perhaps only way to prevent 9-1-1-style attacks on the U.S. is for American citizens to compel their government to comply with the rule of law. The lesson of Nuremberg is that this is not only our right, but our obligation. To the extent we shirk this responsibility, we, like the "Good Germans" of the 1930s and '40s, are complicit in its actions and have no legitimate basis for complaint when we suffer the consequences. This, of course, includes me, personally, as well as my family, no less than anyone else.

These points are clearly stated and documented in my book, "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," which recently won Honorary Mention for the Gustavus Myer Human Rights Award for best writing on human rights. Some people will, of course, disagree with my analysis, but it presents questions that must be addressed in academic and public debate if we are to find a real solution to the violence that pervades today's world. The gross distortions of what I actually said can only be viewed as an attempt to distract the public from the real issues at hand and to further stifle freedom of speech and academic debate in this country.

This quote of yours certainly does make some good points, and I am not at all in disagreement with you that mistakes in US foreign policy played a large role in setting the stage for what happened on 9/11.

However... as you surely know, that quote you used was a part of Mr. Churchill's damage-control campaign after his initial over-the-top provocative statements backfired and led to folks calling for him to be fired from his position as a University professor. Here's an excerpt from the actual essay:

Ward Churchill wrote:

...Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance" – a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore" – counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see.

ely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.
[/quote]
Source: Wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill_9/11_essay_controversy

Doh! Obviously, I'm not clever enough to get those quotes to work, either. Sorry.

Here's that statement, again (hopefully you can actually read it):

Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance" – a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore" – counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait under Saddam Hussein on August 2, 1990, put the Saudi kingdom and the House of Saud at risk, ...
Bin Laden continued to speak publicly against the Saudi government for harboring American troops, for which the Saudis banished him. He went to live in exile in Sudan, in 1992, in a deal brokered by Ali Mohamed.
...
Ok - so you are one of those who believe the idiotic conspiracy theories. You no doubt also believe the world was literally created in six days, that the Apollo lunar missions were staged in a film studio in area 51 and aliens built the Pyramids.

But in this case there are so many contradictions in the belief that the CIA or C&A or Elvis or whoever were responsible for 9/11 that Occam's razor seems to have been honed especially for it. To suggest that the CIA did it, or Mossad or Bush himself in order to justify attacking Afghanistan and Iraq is ridiculous when you consider the fact that anti-Americans accused the US (and the UK) of acting illegally in both wars anyway.

Why would the US kill 3,000 of their own citizens to justify two wars in the middle east.
...
Vietnam must be seen in the context of the Cold War - America at the time feared annihilation from 'the great spectre' of the global spread of communism and indeed with the Cuban missile crisis this almost happened. Ill advised? certainly - but understandable to an extent given the ideological and political context of the time. ..
But I absolutely agree that America has the right to defend itself.

You present a sympathetic argument for the USA. You are also very hostile to opposing points of view.
If America was justified in going to war against Vietnam and America is justified in attacking Afghanistan and Iraq then you would have to also justify the WTC attacks. As you acknowledge (according to interpretations of bin Laden’s speeches), America invaded his home soil and he feared annihilation from 'the great spectre' of the global spread of US imperialism. In that sense, he is justified in taking steps to preserve and promote his way of life wherever he saw fit and his actions understandable to an extent given the ideological and political context of the time. There can be no difference. Americans killing Vietnamese villagers, torturing Iraqi soldiers, bombing Afghan towns and littering Laos with bombs is no more justified than a handful of Saudi’s ploughing planes into various US targets on September 11.
I would add that the House of Saud is hardly an organisation beyond reproach and in need of saving. They are not democratic, obscenely wealthy and preside of one of the least liberated systems in the world.
Whilst I don’t think the CIA bombed the WTC, I can fully understand why people would believe they would. The USA is a country that has carried out cruel and illegal covert operations for many years. The US involvement in things like the Contra scandal, the bombing of Laos and other such horrors is clear reason for somebody to have no faith in the honesty and integrity of the US govt and its motivations. The US has been involved in actions that have led to the deaths of thousands of their own citizens (Vietnam war, jailing and executing its own citizens instead of educating them, the war on terror, the war on drugs) so many people feel that the conspiracies are true. As I said, the USA is openly secretive. It is not idiotic to distrust America, whether the popular conspiracy theories are the next best option on the other hand is certainly open to question.
Finally, in response to the inevitable “the USA is better behaved than Saddam Hussein, bin Laden or some other Sharia country” that will be posted by somebody, I don’t care to judge a country by the standards set by the Taliban et al. My point is not that any killing of citizens is justified but rather, the opposite.

If America was justified in going to war against Vietnam and America is justified in attacking Afghanistan and Iraq then you would have to also justify the WTC attacks.

I understand your anti war stance and I agree with the foolishness and horror of wars, unjust some of them were as well. But to say the WTC attacks have to be justified if you agree with the attack on Afghanistan, is a bit absurd, since it was in response to the attack.

hito wrote:

As you acknowledge (according to interpretations of bin Laden’s speeches), America invaded his home soil and he feared annihilation from 'the great spectre' of the global spread of US imperialism. In that sense, he is justified in taking steps to preserve and promote his way of life wherever he saw fit and his actions understandable to an extent given the ideological and political context of the time.

Bin Laden was not a martyr for some mighty cause. He's not in any sense justified merely because he has a particular ideology.

It seems to me that the text I quoted is more of a clarification of the text you quoted than it is "damage control".

I don't think the second text contradicts the first(the one you quoted).

However, the first text about the 'little Eichmanns', by being shorter, is more easily distorted and misinterpreted.

When a bomb kills innocent people, are the people who knowingly took part in the making of that bomb (from the engineers who designed the bomb to the factory workers who assembled it) have some responsibility in the killing of these innocent people?

If America was justified in going to war against Vietnam and America is justified in attacking Afghanistan and Iraq then you would have to also justify the WTC attacks.

I understand your anti war stance and I agree with the foolishness and horror of wars, unjust some of them were as well. But to say the WTC attacks have to be justified if you agree with the attack on Afghanistan, is a bit absurd, since it was in response to the attack.

hito wrote:

As you acknowledge (according to interpretations of bin Laden’s speeches), America invaded his home soil and he feared annihilation from 'the great spectre' of the global spread of US imperialism. In that sense, he is justified in taking steps to preserve and promote his way of life wherever he saw fit and his actions understandable to an extent given the ideological and political context of the time.

Bin Laden was not a martyr for some mighty cause. He's not in any sense justified merely because he has a particular ideology.

And we didn't invade Saudi Arabia.

According to him, the US did invade Saudi Arabia. According to him, the US is not justified merely because they have an ideology. According to him, the attack of the WTC was in response to an attack.

The point is, there are at least two sides to a conflict. Justification is relative unless you are truly innocent.